One of the goals that Santa Cruz was working on before the pandemic was to be a tourist capital of a tourist island. COVID frustrated that path, like so many others. Two years after the paralysis, and at a cost of 60 million euros, which is what tourists have stopped spending since they could not come, the capital is beginning to wake up to once again attract the eyes of visitors. The figures show a timid recovery and, thus, in 2021 almost a million visitors passed through the capital, a figure that is still 54% below those who visited it in 2019, which were more than 2.5 million. Those tourists spent 107 million in Santa Cruz, while last year, only 46 were left, which was still 30% more than what was recorded in tourist spending in 2020, in the midst of the pandemic.
According to data from the socioeconomic observatory of the Development Society, the exact number of visitors to the city in 2021 was 989,127, of which 706,481 were excursionists, 115,046 cruise passengers, and 167,600 stayed in the capital. This last figure is precisely the one that has recovered the most compared to 2019, since its fall was only 28% last year, compared to excursionists, who reached 60%, or cruise passengers, who were even less than those who They arrived in 2020.
The delegate councilor of the Development Society, Alfonso Cabello, believes that, although the recovery is slow, the data gives rise to optimism. “Santa Cruz has set itself the goal of recovering the objective of being the tourist capital of a tourist island and, for this, we want to accelerate it with a recovery plan that is designed within the context of the different strategic plans of the capital,” he said. Cabello points out that, for this, “we are going to take advantage of the mobilization of economic resources linked to the Next Generation funds of the European Union, in its tourist leg, but we are also going to make an important commitment to the sector with our own resources.” “The objective -he continued- is to recover the more than 2.5 million tourists who visited the city in 2019”. And it is that, as the mayor recalls, as far as the number of visitors is concerned, “in 2020 we saw in the context of the pandemic how we fell by almost 70%, and in 2021 the drop reached 61%” .
To achieve this recovery, it is important that the Canary Islands in general find a growth path that returns it to pre-pandemic tourist values and, taking into account that the variable of excursionists is the one that has the most weight within the total number of visitors to the city, which the Archipelago recovers its tourists directly benefits Santa Cruz. In 2021 alone, this part of the visitors spent more than 29 million in the city.
As for those staying, they left more than ten million euros in Santa Cruz, while cruise passengers spent around five million. The latter are the ones that register the most expenses per person and day (almost 52 euros), hence the forecasts of the Port Authority for this year complete the objective of the capital, which already forecasts scales in the capital port are 360 .
